


Endures the Storms

by Culumacilinte



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angels, Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/pseuds/Culumacilinte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some angels who take forms of flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endures the Storms

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Yuletide 2008

 

There were some angels who took forms of flesh, slipped down into the many worlds to walk among their people, shining beings concealed within skin. Sometimes they would even take mortals into their beds, sometimes leaving behind progeny, children with cheeks that glowed with more than the rose of health. Flesh was a strange thing to an angel, something to be coveted, lusted after, for it could never be attained.

Not so for Balthamos. Angelic form suited him. Dust and pure intellect, condensed into a form beautiful and graceful and efficient, capable of what it was made for. Balthamos never wished for more than what he had been given, content to watch over those poor, short-lived mortals in curiosity and faint distaste.

There were some angels who had once been mortal, men and women who'd managed to escape the fate of their kind, transfigured into Dust at the moment of their death. Not many of them at the beginning, when Balthamos stood in rank with those other first angels, and those who were, when they did begin to appear, were regarded differently. There was no prejudice, for to an angel, an angel is an angel, and no more need be said, but they were different, without a doubt. Balthamos cared little, even when a man called Enoch was taken into the Kingdom, and named the Lord Regent.

Except that then the brother of the man who had once been called Enoch died, and his atoms floated up to the Clouded Mountain, gaining form and shape as they went, until he was angelic. His name was Baruch. And Baruch was different. Though he was of Dust, the sweetness of fleshliness and of Earth seemed to cling to him, as though they were loath to let him go. In his eyes was all the pure strength and purpose of mortality, of flesh that knows its way in the physical world, and had Balthamos had a heart, it would have melted.

Baruch was mortal and angelic both at once, and suddenly Balthamos understood why his brethren took on flesh to lie with mortals. He wanted to _feel_ , and Baruch, darling, honest Baruch, let him.

But it was Baruch, being mortal still in some part of him, who died first of the pair of them, and Balthamos's cry went up to the uncaring heavens when he felt the loss of him. Gone. Dust and atoms scattered to the winds, and now he could feel still, as Baruch had taught him, but there was none of the sweetness in it. None of Baruch's love, or Baruch's voice, or Baruch's strong wings, and without that, it was worthless. He was not strong enough alone, not for himself or for the boy Will, and full of such _feeling_

He felt, and he understood now what had been hidden from him before, but he hated it. Balthamos knew why an angel might take on the form of flesh, for what exquisite pleasures were afforded those of Earth that were denied him.

If he was of flesh, than he might die.

Baruch had felt, and had died, and there was no reason Balthamos could not do the same.


End file.
